Life & Style | Gadgets & Tech
What's next?
Here is 4men's short list of some the more interesting trends emerging in technology. This isn't about gadgets, but how consumers shape technology usage to create new social patterns.
- By Hisham Wyne, Freelance Writer
- Published: 14:03 January 6, 2009
- Image Credit:
Strange. Weird. Complex. Ubiquitous. These are just some of the words you could use to describe the ways people use technology every day. 2008 was an interesting year for tech advances in the sand lands, and 2009 will see more people find creative uses for the myriad technologies out there.
Here is 4men's short list of some the more interesting trends emerging in technology. This isn't about gadgets, but how consumers shape technology usage to create new social patterns.
How about a Second Life?
2008 has been about the ability to live a Second Life, and the trend looks to strengthen in 2009 and beyond. It's just what it says– a chance to lead an entirely new life in virtual reality.
Second Life is a massively multiplayer online environment with millions of people controlling online characters who are living second lives, hopefully more exciting than their first.
Unlike normal gaming environments where you team up with like-minded warriors to take down dragons or infiltrate World War II bases, Second Life gives you a chance to do nothing very much in particular.
Hypothetically, you can eat pizza and get fat in front of your computer while watching your Second Life avatar eating pizza and getting fat in a parallel world. Of course, real life collides with online avatars in strange and unusual ways. In a case of virtual hilarity, a couple from the United Kingdom filed for divorce when the woman saw her man cuddling with a curvaceous avatar in Second Life.
But Second Life is more than a chance of squandering your first in front of a computer screen. It is a reasonable facsimile of actual interaction, complete with business organisations that help Second Lifers plan events, buy goods and manage their avatars.
20th Century Fox held a movie premier for X-Men: The Last Stand in Second Life. ABN Amro bank has a virtual branch there, Dell sells its PCs to Second Lifers, and Cisco has avatars offering demonstrations of corporate solutions within the virtual world. In fact, Reuters recently made news when they decided to close their Second Life operations and re-allocate the dedicated reporter they had assigned to exclusively cover news in the virtual world.
What this means for Dubai: Second Life hasn't really caught on yet in Dubai, but times are changing. Watch out for more people to escape to second lives.
More interestingly, keep an eye out for Dubai-based businesses trying new business models in Second Life before bringing them to the real world. www.secondlife.com
Citizen journalism
Everyone has an opinion. The World Wide Web is a fundamental tool for most of us to communicate, gain information, and waste office hours watching high I.Q. individuals mixing Coke and Mentos to explosive effect on YouTube.
But the original Web 1.0 was read-only. You find an article you like, read it and you nod appreciatively. But that is where the interaction ends. Web 2.0 is more capable of catalysing two-way communication, with everyday users given the ability to generate content for other users. Everyone with an internet connection is a potential contributor to content that builds the Web.
For instance, suppose you read this article and suddenly feel an unexpected burst of vitriol towards the author.
With Web 1.0, you could only shake your fist furiously at your computer screen. With the new web, you could go to the 4men website and leave nasty comments. If they refuse to publish them, you could always start a blog, call it ihatehisham.blogspot.com is available should anyone be interested. Follow that up with a video posted on YouTube featuring you chuckling manically while sticking pins in a little wax doll looking like the author.
The point is that Web 2.0 is not static. Every reader is also a commentator and every citizen a journalist and columnist.
While this of course leads to opinionated trolls scavenging through blogs and discussion forums to pick arguments, it also leads to a rich stream of personalised content, opinions and discussions that would not have been possible in
the old Web.
This user-generated content does hang around by itself, but is linked to images and videos and official old-school sources like newswires and encyclopaedia articles. The result is a glorious mash-up of information, media and content that averages out to often portray a fairly accurate picture of facts on the ground.
Mash-ups are not the most unbiased sources for serious fact-finding but are usually an excellent place to start.
In the new Web, access is the name of the game where users rate content created by other users. For instance, turn to Authonomy.com, a Harper Collins site that lets aspiring writers short circuit the drawn-out agony of finding publishers willing to give you time of day. Fellow writers and Web users rate books submitted, and the top five are reviewed for Harper Collins editors for possible publishing contracts.
Some up and coming Dubai novelists have already submitted excellent manuscripts there. So go read and vote. Authonomy.com may be the wellspring for the next great Dubai novel.
What this means for Dubai: Web 2.0 is catching on, and 3.0 is around the corner. Expect more people to have blogs on everyday life, observations, novelty subjects and strange hobbies.
The fun starts when all this content is searched and indexed and becomes cross-referring. So, for instance, searching for a contemporary topic such as the Emirates ID card will bring up blogs as well as official news sources.
Such mash-ups are not always objective but offer a very valuable source of information for businesses, journalists and users alike.
Poking and advertising online
Ah, those social networking sites.
Those scourges of wasted time and exhausted patience, where complete strangers band together into bunches of cyber-acquaintances. Say hello to Facebook, Hi5, Orkut, Twitter and a myriad of other sites that allow you to do anything and everything save develop meaningful social skills. 2008 was definitely the year of the Facebook Friend.
But social networking is far more than pretending to be more popular than you really are.
The wonks and boffins all agree that social networking platforms represent the next big thing in convergence. Basically, all these technologies bring people together, creating large target audiences for businesses and other users to get the word out.
For example, Facebook already has a brilliant advertising programme where you can pay to have your advertisement seen only by the demographic you want. So head there if you want to sell toothpaste to males from Timbuktu over 35 years old and living in the south of Jumeirah.
What this means for Dubai: Social networking sites are an excellent way of getting in touch with people you would never bother to meet in real life.
But taken together, they also offer a large platform for bringing users new, targeted services. Watch out for well-aimed ads, specific updates, news alert services, party invites… you name it. No one saw it coming, but these large social networks are turning into next-generation marketing and service delivery tools. Stay tuned!
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